


Blew Out the Light of My Soul

by miriad



Category: Being Human (North America)
Genre: Death of Original Characters, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-23
Updated: 2011-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:40:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miriad/pseuds/miriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aiden wasn’t lying when he told Josh that it was a bad idea to bring his family into their world.  He wasn’t lying when he said that it wouldn’t end well.</p><p>See, once upon a time, Aiden was called Ian.  And Ian had a family.  He had a wife and a son and a life that didn’t include drinking blood to survive.</p><p>And then, one day, he didn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blew Out the Light of My Soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Marien](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marien/gifts).



Aiden wasn’t lying when he told Josh that it was a bad idea to bring his family into their world.  He wasn’t lying when he said that it wouldn’t end well.

See, once upon a time, Aiden was called Ian.  And Ian had a family.  He had a wife and a son and a life that didn’t include drinking blood to survive.

And then, one day, he didn’t.

*

Emmeline had the face of an angel, at least that’s what Ian had always thought. Green eyes, the color of the back fields, and red hair that glowed like the fire in the hearth. She was tall and willowy, almost at eye height with him, her teeth sharp and white and even.

He had known her since they were children, playing together at church socials and meeting on the roads. He'd known that he would marry her from the time he was eleven years of age, when she dove into the river to swim after him, after he'd fallen off that log, into the sweeping water.

It had been raining, harder than usual, and for days, but Ian had thought he was clever, and braver than the men in the village who had avoided the river entirely. Emmeline had known differently and had followed him, understanding that at some point, stupidity would claim him and she would need to claim him back. And that she did.

Her skirts were soaked, and heavy, dragging them both down, but she fought with the strength of a farmer's daughter and got them to the river bank without swallowing too much of the damn thing. She'd yelled for a bit, smacking him on the arm, and then she'd kissed him, right on the mouth.

Then she'd stood, and pulling up her skirts, she'd run as fast as her legs could carry her and all that water in her clothing. Ian had felt his face with his fingers, the faint buzzing that she'd left behind, like his lips were full of bees, and he knew it was love.

*

His father died when he was fifteen and he inherited the land and the house and the barn. He had no brothers, and his mother had long since passed away. He was the sole heir of a reasonable fortune and everyone in town knew it.

A few parents stopped in to visit, their young and beautiful daughters in tow. But Ian knew, as he had for the past four years, that his heart belonged to one woman. Emmeline hadn't been by yet, but it would happen. And he would wait.

It didn't take long for her father to come sniffing around. John Clark was a bit of a drunk, although he could still farm his own plot and make a profit. But he had five daughters and he knew that he would need to marry them off if he wanted to have any peace at all in his old age. It was clear, at least to Emmeline’s father, that Ian was interested in her hand, and so he offered it, almost as an afterthought.

To Ian, Emmeline was never an afterthought.  Because he knew that it would bother John, and make him nervous about the loss of what he had considered a sure thing, Ian made it seem as though he was considering other offers.  Her father believed Ian, every word, but Ian caught her eye and winked, and when she winked back at him, he knew that she knew.

*

They were married two years later, when he was seventeen and she was sixteen. He had finished as much schooling as he was sure he would need, and was running the farm on his own much to his own surprise. She moved in the day after they were wed and brought with her the light and the life that his home had been missing for years.

The first time they made love it was awkward but eventually, they had gotten the hang of it, laughing as he tried and missed to enter her. She was struggling to take him and he wondered if that was how it always was or would be. And then he recalled a bawdy joke that an older boy had told when they were in school together.

Smiling up at her, he slide beneath the covers and found her sex with his mouth and began to lick. And that was when the fun started. All of a suddenly, all of the jokes that he had heard as a boy began to make sense.

And as they got to know one another, as husband and wife, it because easier and easier to enjoy each others flesh. Ignoring the advice of older men in the village because a point of pride for Ian, especially when that advice suggested that she should just lay back and take whatever he wanted to give to her.

 He liked the noises she made when he found the right spots with his tongue or his fingers or his cock. He loved to hear her moan his name, to feel her tighten around him and to grip and his shoulders and his back as he pounded into her and came.

*

The morning she came to him and told him that her monthly time had not come, for the second month in a row, he was ecstatic. Emmeline seemed frightened and worried, not sure what to do as this was her first child to carry. He kissed her and made love to her, all the while assuring her that all would be well. They would manage this together, just as they had done since their wedding night.

She seemed to glow with child, her face luminous in the sunshine or the moonlight. The larger her belly grew, the more Ian knew that he loved her and could never do enough to keep her, and the baby, safe.

Ian’s son was born early on a Friday morning and he was the most perfect thing that Ian had ever laid eyes on.  They named him William, after Ian’s father. Will had Ian’s hair and his mother’s eyes, and he was perfect. Ian felt too young to be a father, the swaddled babe in his arms so tiny and lost that it was easy to forget that the baby was his and not some doll one of Emmeline’s sisters had left after their last visit.

Emmeline was so tired after the birth that Ian worried that she would take ill, like so many other women in town had over the past few years. The midwife assured him that it was normal, that all was well, but it didn’t feel like all was well. Ian felt something coming, like lightening in a storm, the hairs on his arms raising.

Eventually, she did recover, the flush coming back to her cheeks, the light coming back to her eyes.  They settled into a new routine, found a way to make the farm and the house and the baby all work.  The further away from Will’s birth they got, the more Ian forgot about his misgivings, and the feeling that something awful, something evil, was headed his way.

That was his first mistake.  He would, much to his dismay, make many, many more.

*

Aiden remembers how is started, how he set in motion the downfall of everything he loved.  He would love to blame Bishop, but it really isn’t his fault.  Bishop warned him, told him not to go back.  Told him to just let everyone think that he was dead, that he had been shot and bled out on a battlefield like so many others.

“She’ll understand,” Bishop had said, his face wearing a kind frown but his eyes cold and hard.  “She’ll honor your death and move on.  Let it go.”

But Aiden couldn’t let it go.  He couldn’t think of her with another man, bearing someone else’s child, waiting for someone else to make love to her.  He couldn’t imagine her growing old without him.

Thanks to Aiden, she never grew old with anyone.  If he hates himself for anything, it’s that.  He can remember every detail of what happened, from the moment he came through the front door to the second that he walked through it for the last time.  It plays on a loop in his brain when the world gets too quiet and he can’t block it out any more.

He wants to tell Josh.  Wants to lay it all out there, the things that happen when you forget you’re a monster.  The things that happen when you let people get too close.  He wants to tell Josh, but he can’t.  Because Josh would never understand, Aiden’s pretty sure, and he isn’t ready to lose Josh just yet.

He’s alone in the house, as alone as one can be with a ghost trapped there with you, and he’s letting everything play across his brain like a feature at the movies.  Everything’s in sepia and blue, faded like a photograph and jerky like the early silent movies.

But he can hear it, smell it, taste it, every bit of it, and he lets it play because he deserves it.  He deserves to see it, to hear it and feel it.  He deserves the memory because it’s all his fault and he can’t ever forget that or he’ll be doomed to repeat it. 

*

"Something's happened to me," he says, his eyes flitting from her face to the wall behind her and back, worried about what she might say. Emmeline’s eyes narrow at him, trying to taking him all in, the eye of one with a great gift for detail.

 "What happened to you, Ian? What would happen that could ever make you doubt your welcome here?" He's sure that she's thinking the worst of him. That's he's shot women and children while he was away, or that he's suffered a wound that has taken a toe or something greater.

Frederick Marshall has been wounded in the groin ten years before in a hunting accident and if the rumors were true, he'd yet to have an official erection since. Ian is sure, just from the look on her face, that she is thinking of the good Frederick Marshall and is hoping and praying that she won't have to deal with a situation like that.

"No, not what you're thinking, although I'm not sure this isn't worse." He lifts her hand with his, noticing her face as the coolness of his skin registers with her. She starts to pull her hand back, then stops herself.  He can feel her tense up, like one of the horses before they buck, but she stays where she is.  She wants to trust him, he can feel it, but she doesn’t actually trust him. 

This should be a warning sign but it isn’t.   

Ian places her hand on his chest, where she had rested it before and felt his heart beat. Except, his heart is no longer beating, that steady pounding no longer moving the blood through his veins. He waits for her to notice, for her to figure it out.

He doesn't have to wait long. Her eyes widen and she does pull away from him, her hand flying away from his body as though she'd been burned.

"Ian, I don't understand."

"I'm not sure I understand either. I just know that I'm... different."

"How?  How did this happen?"  She backs up slowly, leaning against the sideboard table, hands gripping the edge of it, knuckles white.  He stays where he is, even though he wants nothing more than to pull her to him and kiss her breath away.

"I know that it's difficult, but whatever this is, it means that I'm still with you. That I'm still here."

"But should you be? Here, with me?" Emmeline’s voice is but the barest of whispers now and she's not looking at his face, avoiding his eyes if she can help it. He can smell her skin, can smell the fear running through her and it sickens him a little to discover that he likes it. The more he smells it, in fact, the harder he's getting in his trousers.

"I don't know. But I am home now, here with you and with Will, and I am too grateful to question it." She doesn't say anything else, just turns towards the fire and grabs up the poker, never turning her back on him.

"Where is Will?"  He tries for casual, but his voice waivers.  Ian hasn’t seen his son in over two years and he wants nothing more than to hug him close and feel for himself that Will is alive.

"He's gone down to the river with the other boys. He'll be along shortly for his chores. He's a good boy." She says it like Ian doesn't already know that, like her doesn't remember the boy his son was and the prospect of the man he would become shining brightly from his little face. Ian remembers all too well, and he, too, has concerns about his place in this world that he's rediscovering.

"I'll check on the animals."  Ian tries to pretend like things are the same as they were.  They aren’t but he can try for the moment.  Emmeline’s shoulders loose a bit of their tightness and he can hear her short sigh from where he stands.  She turns back to him, and points at the stove.

"We need wood, if you please."  He doesn’t ask about the waiver in her voice or the tremor in her hand.   

"M'lady." He tips an imaginary hat to her, not having one of his own currently to doff. She smiles, slightly, her face still, pale and washed out.

*

The cows are fine, as are the chickens and the horses. The sheep startle a little when he walks through the fence, their eyes dark and afraid when he gets near. He wonders if it has anything to do with his new existence and when the pigs react in the same way, he knows it is.

Everything smells different, all the blood and life flowing through almost everything on his farm calling out for him to just have a taste, just one before the evening leaves them. The idea of drinking blood both intrigues him and makes him want to vomit, despite the hunger that gnaws at his belly night and day.  He hasn’t had a chance to really investigate the rules, what he needs and what he doesn’t, since he was turned.  He simply hasn’t had the time.  But he’s looking forward to figuring it out, now that he’s home.

He hasn't stopped to eat anything other than rats and raccoons in days, trying to make it to the house before Bishop could get there, and he did. But his stomach is crying for food, real food, which his body knows is the warm, dark liquid that pumps through the chests and limbs of every living creature on his farm.

His hard on still hasn't gone away and he wonders if she will let him share a bed that night. If she'd let him take her as he'd been dreaming about doing for months now. He wants her, not just her body and her sweet, tight cunt, but her blood as well.

When he stood in the kitchen before, it had taken all he had to not lean forward and lick the salt from her neck, paving the way for a deeper, strong contact. His teeth feel extra sharp in his mouth and his jaw aches in the way that he knows his new teeth are showing.

Bishops word's haunt him, words said in his ear as he raced away from the battlefield. "She won't take you back, not the way you want her to. And if she does, she will regret it. Not for very long, but she will regret it."

Ian wonders just what, exactly, Bishop meant by that, but he's fairly sure it has to do with the need singing through him, the call that her blood is making to his body and the way that whatever he is now wants to heed that call and be done with it. It's difficult, so very difficult to say no, to hold himself back. He doesn't want to hurt her.

He's loved her since he was eight years old and she smiled at him for the first time and the church social. He's watched her, and watched out for her, ever since that day and he'll be damned (which he probably already is) if he's going to be the one to cause her any pain or suffering, any more than he already has.

Night is coming on, he can feel it even in the barn, and he wonders where Will is. Sweet, beautiful Will, with his innocent heart and his love of all things great and small. Ian is sure that his son will one day grow to be a great man and he feels so blessed to be able to see that happen, even with this new complication.

*

He expects Will to run to him, to jump into his arms and hug him tightly, but that isn't what happens when Will finally returns home. Instead, he stops at his mother' skirts, clinging to the cloth with small fingers, white knuckled in what Ian smells to be fear.

"Will, what vexes you? Your father is home."  Ian says it with a smile, his voice even but his chest tight inside.  This is not what he was expecting, not at all.

"Is he?" Emmeline asks first, standing in front of their boy, protection from something she doesn't understand.  She doesn’t believe him, doesn’t trust him, and it hurts but he can’t blame her.  His heart doesn’t beat and she knows it.  His skin is cold to the touch.  A good Christian woman would suspect that he was a demon, at least his mother would have.  He’s grateful that she hasn’t called him that, or asked him if he was.  He’s sure, however, that she’s thought about it.

"I'm who I always ways, in all the ways that count. You have my word on that."  He sits down at the table, the chair creaking under his weight.   

"What of the other ways? The ways you've changed? How can I trust that we are safe with you?" Her eyes are skittish, much like a horse surrounded by fire and Ian wants to break something, to crush and tear and destroy, if only because he's the reason that look is crossing her fine features.

 "I swear on my mother's grave, I am the man you married." She relaxes a bit then, and Will comes out from behind her, still clinging to her dress. "Can I not at least receive a hug from my son?" He grins as he says it, trying to look as peaceful and gentle as he can. Will takes a step, then another, and suddenly he's running to Ian, tears on his cheeks, face red with worry and the slight chill in the air.

"Papa, why were you gone so long?"

"I don't know, Will. But I promise you, we shall not be parted again." And suddenly, she's there, beside them, he fingers curling through the hair that has loosened itself from his queue, and he finds that tears cross his cheeks as well. He hadn't known he could still cry.

*

She smells like the greatest sweet treat he's ever had in his life, like the best steak he's ever tasted, the best roast that has ever set foot in his mouth. She smells of blood and sweat and the thousand little things that she works with everyday. He remembers what he thought of her before he left, the way she smelled of bread and candles, cider and cream. What she smells like now is above and beyond anything that he remembers, or wants to remember.

She's letting him touch her, more than she has in the two weeks since he's been home, and his hands are shaking a little. He can tell that hers are as well, but he's sure that it's for a different reason. He's struggling with his need to bite into her and drink his fill. He's sure that she doesn't have the same compulsion.

He's sure that he could stop any time he wants to, could walk away if it gets too hard. But as her heart beats faster, the smell gets stronger and the pull gets harder and harder to fight. He sticks his tongue out and takes one good lick up her neck, the taste of her skin intoxicating.  She moans against him, pushing her body into his, rubbing against his erection and he’s on fire.

Whatever dam he had constructed to hold back the monster he’s become breaks open and it all pours out like a rush of water.  Emmeline saved him once from drowning, he recalls, but now they’re both sinking.

It's like red clouds his vision, everything hazy and hard to see through the veil that's covering his eyes. It's like someone hooked him around the middle and pulled him back out of his body, like he's watching from far away as he does things to his wife that he couldn't have imagined even in his worst nightmare.

There is blood everywhere. It coats everything, including him. He can hear it spatter on the fire, the hiss of the droplets as it evaporates loud to his sensitive ears. She tastes like manna from heaven, sweet and divine. He drinks greedily, gulping and slurping like some drunkard in a pub before last call.

She’s pounding on his back, her knee ramming into him but he ignores it.  He can hear her calling out his name and it just drives him on, pushes him closer to release.

It isn't until later that he'll even think to wonder if she was asking him to stop or not. It isn't until later that the guilt will force him to understand that she did not wish to be treated in that way. That's when he knows that she is dead. This is when he actually kills her.

He makes the mistake of drinking until her heart stops beating, when her blood runs bitter and thin. He spits out the first tastes of it, letting it hit the floor with a loud squelching sound.

"Papa?"  Through the haze, Ian sees Will in the doorway, rubbing his eyes, dressed in bed clothes. He's still in a blood rage, the need to drink after refusing to let himself do so for so long pushing him to drink more than his fill, more than is prudent. But he is still young and he is still learning. 

Ian reaches out to Will, clasping his arm in an ironclad grip, fingers causing bone to grind together.  Ian jerks his son off his feet, pulling him close so Ian can smell his young skin and hear his healthy heart beating like the rabbits they keep out in the barn.

"Papa, please. What-" Will doesn't get out any more words before Ian rips into his throat and tears out his lifeblood. It goes faster than Emmeline- the vessel is smaller, all in all. The fresh, young taste of the blood makes Ian smile, teeth still sharp and ready for the kill.  Stopping before it gets bitter- he does learn his lessons- he drops the body to the floor, empty and useless.

A belly full of fresh blood makes him sleepy, and Ian curls up on the bed, under his wife's finest quilt, and sleeps better than he has in years, the monster inside him sated and happy.

*

Ian wakes to find himself cold and wet and sticky. He rolls to the side to ask Emmeline what happened and to see if she's okay, but he can already tell that the bed is empty and that she is not laying beside him. He sits up, rubbing at his face, blanching when it comes away crusty with aging blood and spit.

He swings his feet over the side of the bed, anticipating cold wooden flooring but his feet are stopped less than halfway by something cool and soft. He looks down and sees his wife's beautiful green eyes staring back up at him, terrified but dead of life, her skin pallid and gray.

He gasps to himself, suddenly sick about what might be on his face and why, but it only gets worse when he turns to his right and looks past her feet. Will, his head turned at an impossibly unnatural angle, small fingers curled up toward the ceiling.

"No. No, no, no." Ian slides to the floor, falling on his side as he hits her body on the way down. His shoulder knocks against the wood, causing his head to ricochet off the floor as well. He sees starts for a minute, a vast improvement over the corpse of his wife, but his vision clears soon enough. He reaches a hand out, one finger stroking her cheek, running over the blood that's been smeared across it. He feels the tears running down his own cheek and he closes his eyes.

He hears feet on the stairs but doesn’t care.  He deserves whatever he gets from whomever finds him.

"I told you." Bishop.  He’d finally made it.  If Ian could get up, could pull himself out of this hellish nightmare, he'd go over and kill that son of a bitch. If he could get up. "I did tell you, my boy. We cannot be caged. And a cage, no matter how beautiful, is all this was."

"Stop."  Ian closes Emmeline’s eyes, pressing his hand over her face, trying not to look at the damage he’s caused.

"Why? It's the truth, isn't it?"  Bishop steps around Ian and sits on the bed.  Ian can see his feet from the corner of his eye, boots polished and black as sin.

"I didn't want it to be."  His chest heaves, his eyes burning.  They’re dead.  They’re both dead and Ian caused it.   

"No one does. But that doesn't change anything. Now, get up."  Bishop kicks him gently in the side, pushing into his ribs with that damn polished boot.

"No."  Ian clings to Emmeline, fingers tightening on her nightgown, still tacky with blood.

"Get up. We're going."  Bishop kicks a bit harder.  Ian grunts, clenches his teeth, but doesn’t move.

"I'm staying."  He can’t look at Will, he just can’t, so he looks at his beloved, her fair face and her bright hair.  His tears fall on her face, making tracks in the blood, which just makes him cry that much harder.

"To be killed when they come and find you?”  Bishop makes a tisking sound at him, and claps his hand down on Ian’s shoulder.  “No. No, you are worth much more than that. Get up. We're leaving."

"And go where? My whole world was, was here."  He lifts Emmeline’s body, the weight of her  almost nothing with his new found strength.

"So we sail like Columbus and we find a new world." Bishop holds his hand out, reaching for Ian, like he wants to make things better, even if he can never make them right. Ian wants to believe him. Wants to think that this can be fixed.  But he knows better.

"And if I still say no?"  Bishop lowers his hand, and looks at Ian through narrowed eyes.  Then he smiles, teeth sharp and pointy, ready to feed.  It’s a grin, Ian realizes, suddenly terrified of just what he’s gotten himself into.

"You won't. Eventually, you will say yes. What do I care, really, how long it takes. I have all the time in the world." Bishop turns and walks out the door, leaving Ian with the bloody remains of his wife and his son, and the last vestiges of a fire that he had stoked to make her happy.

*

He buries his wife and his son the same day that he killed them, both beneath the oak at the far end of the field.  He dresses and cleans their bodies and lays them in their graves in their Sunday finest, wrapped in quilts from Emmeline's hope chest.

He takes a few things from the house and then burns it to the ground, watching until the frame collapses and falls in a fiery heap. He sets the animals loose into the paddock, away from the fire, and walks away.  The smoke will bring company, company that he doesn’t want, so he leaves.

*

When he gets to Boston, he rents a room from a widow woman, just until he can figure out what to do next. Where to go.  When she asks his name, he pauses, not sure what to say. He's not Ian anymore, not after what's he's done. Not after he's discovered just who and what he is.

After a minute, with her eyes heavy on his face, he answers her.

“Call me Aiden.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story involves the death of two original characters (Ian/Aiden's wife and son). I've depicted Ian/Aiden's attack on his wife in detail, though the severity may be worse for some readers than others. I feel that it is closer to the depiction of rape than not, so I've marked it as such. I welcome any and all criticisms or suggestions regarding this matter.
> 
> I loved the idea of Aiden having a different name when he was human. I love the idea that he he became someone else when he turned, much like Angel had been Liam. I wanted to work with that, and with his family, and see what I could do with the story that Aiden implied when he was talking with Josh in episode 01x07.
> 
> Thanks to those kind people who took the time to read this and give me suggestions. Any remaining mistakes or poor choices belong to me and me alone.


End file.
